Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic (15 page)

They were marching toward a dark hole, like a great cavern in the earth. But even the newt’s magic vision could not show Amber where they were going.

It was as if the darkness, the hole itself, were aware of Amber.

And as she watched, she realized that many of the mice that she saw hopping through tufts of desert grass or scampering over rocks were barely alive.

Many of them looked haggard, their frames weak from lack of food, as if they were starving. But the worst were more than starved.

Amber could see flesh rotting away from their skulls and bones showing through patches of fallen hair.

Is this a symbol?
she wondered.
Am I to free the mice from death? Or is there really a dark hole that they are going to?

Amber shivered inside, recalling Vervane’s warnings. The mice around here were gone and had been leaving all winter.

No, this wasn’t a metaphor for death. This was a real place, and the mice were being drawn to it.

Amber peered toward the blackness, the great hole. It was in a desert of red rock, in a place ringed with sharp stones, like worn teeth.

She tried to move toward it and thought she saw shapes in the darkness. Foxes and owls, perhaps.

There are more than just humans to deal with,
Amber realized.
There’s something else here—sorcery.

And then the vision faded, and she saw Ben, an ugly little tick huddling among the reddish fur of a vile-looking creature with wings and huge ears.
A bat,
Amber realized. Ben looked miserable, clinging to its fur.

The bat was mushing creatures together, mixing quails with slugs and leeches with spiders, creating an army that would shake the balance of the world. Indeed, he had just finished mushing a new monstrosity.

A huge rattlesnake was half slithering, half walking across the floor. It was a dozen feet long and had the wings of an eagle and an eagle’s talons and sharp beak, but the body of a snake.

“Behold, my masterpiece,” Nightwing cried, “the Conqueror Worm!”

Suddenly from the cave came the cries of Nightwing’s monstrous minions, yammering for blood, howling for war. The bat laughed maniacally even as he wrapped his wings over his ears to protect them from the harsh noise.

Amber felt a tug in her mind, and the newt’s voice came to her now, “Three answers you have had from me,” the newt whispered. “None are left unto thee.”

“Urp,” Amber said. So the newt had noticed. Not only had he noticed that she had asked two questions, but he had provided three answers—showing her not just Ben, but also the mice in cages around the world and the mice that were being drawn into the shadow.

Amber felt as if she were being pulled away from Ben, back from his hole, back through the Weird Wood of slithering vines and poisonous nettles and piles of bones that surrounded Nightwing’s fortress beneath Shrew Hill.

She kept pulling back and back through endless forests and over rugged mountains, past churning rivers and limitless lakes, until she found herself standing beside the newt.

Amber’s heart seemed to stop as the vision faded. A cry of despair rose from her throat as she realized,
I could never walk that far. I’ll never make it.

Chapter 16

THE EYE OF NEWT

He who is best prepared wins his fight before he ever sets foot on the battlefield.

—NIGHTWING

“Three answers you may have of me: ask what is now, what shall come, or what may be.”

INSIDE NIGHTWING’S CAVE, the monsters were finally going to sleep.

Nightwing had stayed up all day, herding in prisoners to create new monstrosities and then pitting them against one another until he’d created his ultimate warrior—the Conqueror Worm.

Only then did he tell his minions, “Go search the forests. Bring me eagles and rattlesnakes, a thousand of each! And with them I will build an army that all of the forces of SWARM cannot repel.”

Ben felt sickened by the barbarity of the display, the endless bloodshed.

He wanted to run away, but he’d seen what happened to Darwin when he tried to escape. So instead, Ben took a little comfort in knowing that one day was almost done. If he had to serve Nightwing for a month, that meant that he only had twenty-nine days left to go.

Many of the monsters went out that night to hunt for snakes and eagles. Ben suspected that in the morning, Nightwing would begin creating a whole new race of monsters to fight his war. And within a day or two, they’d go to war.

Right now, the cave was relatively empty. Only a few guards remained.

Before they went to sleep, Nightwing ordered Fanglorious the snake, “Bring me a fresh newt!”

In moments, a rubbery brown lizard was squirming in the snake’s jaws, trying to escape. The snake wriggled up to Nightwing and dropped the lizard at his feet. The newt cowered before Nightwing and said, “Eat me and you’ll die! My skin is poisonous, you know!”

“I know,” Nightwing said. “But it’s not your skin that I want, just your eye. Now, will you show me what I want, or will you make me rip it from its socket?”

The newt stared blankly, then said in a deep voice, “Three answers you may have of me: ask what is now, what shall come, or what may be.”

“Show me my ancient enemy,” Nightwing commanded, “Rufus Flycatcher, the High Wizard of SWARM”

The newt’s eyes glowed fiery green. Ben peered into them.

He saw a gorgeous scene. It was sunset in a swamp far, far away. Green dragonflies cruised lazily through skies painted gold from a setting sun, while cypress trees cast blue shadows upon the dark water.

Frogs were singing everywhere—croaking so loudly that to Ben it sounded as if he were in a football stadium. There were leopard frogs, bullfrogs, green frogs, tree frogs, spring peepers, carpenter frogs. The calls were so loud and insistent and varied, Ben had never heard anything like it.

The vision zoomed in, down around the roots of a huge cypress tree. There on the cypress knees—knobs of wood that poked up from the black water—sat a handsome bullfrog. Baby alligators patrolled the waters behind him like sentries, while a beautiful white heron watched the bank above, and a pair of turtles—large cooters—sunned on a log nearby. Fireflies danced in the air around his head, their green lights dipping and rising.

Ben had a terrible longing to take a jar and catch the fireflies.

Rufus Flycatcher was busily instructing some young frogs, most of which hadn’t even lost their tails yet, about the difficulties in repairing the damaged wings of fireflies.

“The problem,” Rufus was saying, “is that fireflies aren’t real flies. If y’all look close, you’ll see that they’re beetles, and like any beetle, the real wings are hidden beneath an armored shell, called the
elytra
. So these wings, constantly banging agin’ this shell, get worn out quicker than a butterfly bucking against the wind of a tornado . . .”

“Perfect,” Nightwing chuckled upon seeing the old bullfrog. “This looks just perfect.” Suddenly the bat hissed a loud curse, then magnified his voice as he addressed the frog, “Rufus, I’m coming for you.”

Through the newt’s eye, Ben could hear the bat’s words repeated, only there in the swamp the voice seemed to come from everywhere, booming from the sky, bouncing from the waters, filling every corner of the cypress forest.

The fireflies dipped in the air, startled from their flight, while young frogs and tadpoles croaked in fear and leaped for the safety of the water. Even the alligators dived for safety.

But Rufus Flycatcher boldly held his ground, sitting on a mossy cypress knee while green algae floated all around him. “Nightwing?” Rufus said. “So, you’re still alive? I figured for sure that you’d be toasting like a marshmallow in you-know-where by now.”

“I’m more alive than you are,” Nightwing said. “Your time has come.”

“You still runnin’ that school of yours, SADIST? Not much of a magic school, from what I hear. What kind of magic do you teach?”

“Like most schools,” Nightwing admitted, “we don’t profess to teach much at all.”

“You know, you’re one sick puppy,” Rufus said. “It’s all that evil in you, poisoning you. I tried to heal you of it once. But you clung to it like a baby possum clinging to its mama’s belly. Now, if’n you’d free yourself of evil, you’d be a whole lot better off.”

“Why, I thank you for your concern, my old master. But I don’t want to be healed. I like being a sick puppy. It’s the only thing that I really excel at.”

Rufus Flycatcher shook his head sadly. “Once, there was a time when you were a man, a man who could cast a spell over an audience with just the sound of your voice. You’d stand there and recite a poem and folks would just gasp in amazement. Women would throw themselves at you and swoon at your feet. What I want to know is whatever happened to that feller?”

“Ah, well,” Nightwing said, “Poets have fallen out of favor in the past hundred years.”

The fireflies were still bobbing in the air around Rufus. They brightened a little, believing that the danger was gone.

Nightwing said, “I’ll be seeing you soon. You’d better get some rest. You’ll need it.” Then, in a falsely sweet voice he offered, “Here, let me turn out the lights for you.”

And with that, Nightwing hissed a second curse. The fireflies exploded in midair and went raining down into the water, leaving trails of smoke and debris in the air until they hit the brackish pool, sizzling.

“You can’t scare me. I’m from Texas!” Rufus said in a challenging tone. “I got warts on my armpit that are scarier than you!” He let out a strange croak, which started deeply, causing the whole cave to thunder and shake from the sound. But as the croak ended, it rose to a piercing shriek that caused Nightwing to hiss and throw his wings up over his ears.

The bat’s eyes got wide with terror, as if the continued shrieking would kill him. In desperation, Nightwing waved his wing.

Instantly, the newt’s eye cleared, and the vision faded.

Nightwing stood for a moment, trembling in pain, trying to compose himself. Ben realized that the bat’s ears had been too sensitive to withstand the bullfrog’s sudden assault.

Ben was still gasping in shock at the murder of the fireflies. Though he had gone the whole day without eating, he felt as if he would be sick.

Ben crawled to the edge of the rock and began to gag, remembering the fireflies burning in the water.

Nightwing turned on him and angrily stalked closer. “What, you don’t want me to kill the little froggy?”

Ben shook his head sadly.

“You don’t like what I’m doing with your power?” Nightwing demanded.

Ben looked up, frightened, and shook his head.

Nightwing snarled, “What kind of tick are you? A luna-tick? A roman-tick? Or are you just fran-tick?”

Ben didn’t answer. He sat there, squirming, until Nightwing shouted, “Your attitude displeases me. One day shall be added to your term of service!”

Ben’s heart froze. He had dared to hope that in twenty-nine days he would be free. But Nightwing had just made it an even thirty again.

The bat sneered at him, and Ben could sense the creature’s game. For every day that Ben served, the bat would think up some excuse to keep him a day longer. Ben would never be able to serve Nightwing well enough to get free.

I’m his slave,
Ben realized.
I’m his slave forever.

The very thought made all eight of Ben’s legs so weak that he collapsed to the ground like a rock, his legs clattering around him like broken sticks.

Chapter 17

THE FLIGHT OF THE OWL

Wake up to the miracles that happen all around you.
We grow old only when we lose our sense of wonder.

—RUFUS FLYCATCHER

The owl grabbed her in its talons, and Amber feared that it would crush her.>

By noon, Amber could tell that the journey to Ben’s house was definitely going to take more than a day. The pet shop mice hiked through the fields all day, skirting puddles and temporary creeks, and moved only as quickly as the slowest mouse.

And the mice were slow indeed. They had to stop to ponder every wonder—the cloud-colored throat of a morning glory flower, the sight of ducks flying in a V. They took baths in the warm rain and let themselves dry in the sun. They nibbled on nettles and feasted on peppermint and wild strawberries.

In her spare time, Amber asked Bushmaster and Doonbarra all about bats and learned far too little. It seemed that they were much like mice, but that they flitted about at night, hunting mosquitoes and other gnats. But the most interesting thing that Amber learned was that they could not see well. In the daylight, the sun was too bright, and at night there was often no light. So they guided themselves by sound, emitting high shrieks and chitters, then listening to the tiny echoes.

With such powerful ears,
Amber thought,
a bat should practically be able to hear you think.

No wonder Nightwing had covered his ears when his minions had cheered during the battle.

All during the day, Amber studied and thought and kept watch, worrying for the safety of her friends.

That night, all twenty-seven mice, one vole, and one sugar glider found shelter in a hollow oak tree where they could sleep among the dry leaves. The clouds overhead drifted west and the moon came out, a bright silver ball, and there in the cavernous tree beneath the starlight, Doonbarra told scary stories about ravenous Tasmanian devils and the ghost of a raven that went about stealing the souls of mice to decorate its nest with, until all of them were so frightened that their whiskers stood on end. Then he lightened the mood by telling them a story about an echidna named Sucky Nose who—but the story got bogged down when the mice began asking what an echidna was. Doonbarra explained that an echidna was a small animal that looked like a hedgehog but that it laid eggs, had wicked spines all over its body, and had a long nose like a straw that it stuck in the ground to lick up ants. He explained that echidnas had poisonous spurs on their feet, and that once the babies hatched, they would simply latch onto their mother’s skin and begin sucking so hard that milk would come out right through the echidna’s hide.

By then the mice all realized that Doonbarra had been lying to them all along with his strange tales of Tasmanian devils and spirit ravens, and now they were rolling on the ground, laughing as he invented the strange echidna.

“But I’m tellin’ the truth,” Doonbarra shouted. “There really
are
echidnas!”

“Yeah,” Bushmaster laughed. “And they live on the moon—with your mother!” All of the mice rolled on the ground and laughed at that.

It was in the midst of this that Amber suddenly felt a chill rush over her. Shadows moved in the darkness, just outside the oak tree.

She whirled and cried, “Watch out,” to the other mice.

But in the frail moonglow, all that she saw were voles—a tribe of them, each carrying a needle, the silver starlight and moonlight gleaming from their small spears.

“Hah!” one of them cried. “We sure scared you!”

Amber gaped. She recognized that voice. It was Meadowsweet, one of the voles from behind Ben’s house.

Amber found herself suddenly breathing easier.

“You sure did scare me,” she laughed.

The voles hopped up and peered into the hollow of the tree.

“What are you doing?” Amber asked.

“We came hunting for you,” Meadowsweet said.

Bushmaster pounced forward, his helmet terrifying to behold, and studied his brothers and sisters. “
You
came all of this way?”

“Sure,” Meadowsweet said. “We weren’t afraid.”

Another vole chimed in. “We’ve got spears now! Other animals are afraid of us.”

“Yeah,” Meadowsweet said. “We attacked Domino this morning and chased him around so much that he finally climbed a telephone pole and yowled his head off. Now, every cat for a mile around knows what to expect if they mess with us.”

And so, laughing and joking, the voles entered the hollow of the oak and joined the party.

Soon, Amber could hear them teaching their silly songs to the mice and laughing in the easy way that voles had, and Amber went alone out in the moonlight.

She felt at peace for the first time today. If the voles really were putting the fear of small animals into the local cats, then she felt sure that the pet shop mice would make it home in relative safety.

And even Doonbarra was there to protect them. The mice, tonight, were as safe as they could be.

Amber went out from under the oak and peered up at the moon. It was silver, and the shadows on its face made it look as if something had been burrowing in it. The stars were glimmering gems.

There, with the wind moving across the fields as quiet as a baby’s breath, Amber felt more at ease.

Back in the hole, she could hear Meadowsweet talking loudly. “You haven’t heard of Windborne? Why, he’s only the most famous mouse that ever lived!”

And suddenly the mice fell silent and listened expectantly as the young vole began telling the story of young Windborne, how a weasel had dug into Windborne’s home and tried to eat him and his younger brothers and sisters while his mother was out foraging.

But the weasel was too large and got stuck in the narrow hole. Windborne had begun trying to throw up dirt in order to block the tunnel, digging so fast that the weasel, whose snout was only an inch from Windborne’s tail, suddenly began having a coughing fit. Wedged as he was between the rocks, the weasel couldn’t get a breath and finally suffocated. Thus began the legend of Windborne, who slew a deadly weasel while he was hardly more than a kitten himself, and who went on to become one of the great legends of mousedom.

Amber listened and somehow felt uprooted. She’d lost much by being born in a cage. She didn’t even know her own history. Indeed, she’d never heard a single tale about mouse legends, and it made her wonder what kinds of stories others might tell about her someday.

My story has just begun,
she realized.

And yet now she had to face Nightwing, and if things went ill, her story would end practically before it had begun.

Amber noticed an old stump nearby, tall, its sides covered in moss, while bits of bark rose up like jagged teeth around its sides. Morning glory climbed around its sides, as pale and translucent as clouds in the moonlight.

Wondering what the view from up there might look like, Amber hopped over to the stump, then climbed up the slick moss, finding fingerholds in the grooves of the bark.

When she reached the top, Amber stared down in wonder. The stump was completely hollow inside, the bark covering it like a shell. Inside the hollow stump, a pool of glassy water had formed. And since the moon was shining straight from above, she could see its reflection and her reflection there in the pool. There was a tiny water plant there, a broad leaf floating.

But it was Amber’s reflection that caught her attention. She had never seen herself before, except to catch a bit of her own distorted reflection in another mouse’s eyes. Now, she looked down and gasped.

I am pretty,
she realized.
I’m very pretty.

She turned this way and that, looking critically at her own tail, her shiny coat, the gleam of starlight in her eyes.

Why didn’t Ben ever notice?
she wondered.

“It’s because you are a mouse,” she told herself. Of course, he had said that she was pretty just before she tried to turn him back into a human, but Amber assumed that he said it only to make her feel better.

Everything was quiet, but suddenly in the distance, Amber heard a single cricket raise its voice in song.

Amber wondered where Ben might be.

“Ah, there you are,” someone said. It was an old woman’s voice, scratchy and full of hisses. Amber started so hard that she nearly fell down into the water.

She whirled and saw a small mouselike creature clinging to the lip of the stump. It was dark in color, almost as black as night, and had a long pointy nose and a very short tail.

“I’ve come a long way to see you,” the creature said. “Rode a turtle over the Rockies and almost had you when a lightning bolt lit on him and we crashed.”

“You’ve come to see me?”

“And got here just in the nick of time, it seems,” the creature said. “My name is Blackpool. Lady Blackpool, and I was sent here by the good Rufus Flycatcher, the High Mage of SWARM. There is a place for you there, if you would like to go—a place where you can study the magical arts and master them, as is your destiny.”

“I don’t understand,” Amber said. “I don’t know a thing about magic.”

“All wise folk were born ignorant,” Lady Blackpool said. “Now, listen up. I’ve seen in a vision that you must take a long trip this night and must fight a great battle at dawn. But there are some things that you need to know.”

She came and sat down next to Amber and peered into the dark water, gazing at their reflection.

“The first thing that you need to know is this: magic is everywhere.”

Amber followed Lady Blackpool’s gaze out across the fields. Rye grass and oats shot up everywhere, along with tangled vines and wildflowers. Here and there, wild Indian tobacco and ferns towered above the grasses. From this height, Amber could even see a forest rising over the hills and the millpond surrounded by cattail rushes.

“See that?” Lady Blackpool said. “There’s life everywhere, everywhere that you look. Some places have more life—huge trees rising up in forests, deep roots under the soil. Some places have less life—desert sands where nothing can grow. Magic is that way too. It’s everywhere. A bit here, a bit there. Some places have almost no magic at all, and in some places, the magic is as thick as a forest. We can’t see it, can’t taste it. But sometimes . . . sometimes you can
feel
it.”

Amber pondered this for a long moment. “But, if the magic is everywhere, then that means that I should always have
some
magic power, right?”

“Almost always,” Lady Blackpool said. “All that you have to do is find a place where magic is strong and let it cling to you.”

“But how will I know when I’ve found one?”

Lady Blackpool peered far away. “There are places in this world,” she said, “where the magic is thick in the air. Sometimes, when you’re in one of those places, your mind might be racing so fast that you don’t even notice. But if you slow down and listen . . .”

Amber thought for a long moment. Had she ever been to such a place?

She wasn’t sure.

“So,” Amber said, “all that I really need to do to gain some power is to find a magic place? And so . . . if I travel far enough, I should stumble on one, right?”

“That’s the long and short of it,” Lady Blackpool said. “Most of us wizards are always traveling, always looking for a little patch of magic to keep us going. We’re a lean bunch, haggard, but smart. Kind of pathetic. But some of us settle down. You’re a lucky one, to have a nice powerful familiar like Ben. Someday you’ll be able to just settle down and let the magic flow to you.”

Amber shivered to think of what a treasure she had lost in Ben, and she looked at this strange little dark ball of fur and wondered what kind of creature it was. Not a mouse, not a vole. It almost looked like a mouse that had been badly mangled, and Amber didn’t dare say anything, lest the old wizardess get embarrassed.

“Once you find a little magic spot,” Lady Blackpool said, “you have to conserve your power. Using magic takes energy. Using big magic takes a lot of energy. When you turned Ben into a mouse, you used more energy than most mages would in a lifetime.”

“Really?” Amber asked.

“That’s right. So, for example, if you wanted to eat a blueberry, you could make one pop out of thin air. But that would take a lot of energy. Instead, you might simply wish that you knew where to find a blueberry—or maybe you might wish to find any food at all. For you see, knowledge comes easy. It doesn’t take much energy to change your mind.”

Lady Blackpool fell silent.

As Amber stood peering into the water, she suddenly realized that she had been lost in a daydream for some time. The air around her seemed unnaturally still and silent, and with a profound sense of wonder, Amber realized that this was a magic place.

Perhaps I should go swimming in the pool,
Amber thought.
That way the magic will rub off on me.

But even as she thought it, a huge shadow fell over her, and the light in the pool winked out.